


Call to Duty

by Amand_r



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-02
Updated: 2011-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-17 11:29:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/pseuds/Amand_r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She almost flashed her ID before she realised that she hadn't one.  For a while she'd toyed with using her passport, but that seemed a bit much.  Her fingers itched when she didn't have one, and she considered the fact that really, this was the first time in a long time that she had <i>had</i> the opportunity to introduce herself.  Everyone, apparently took great delight in remarking on how much they knew her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call to Duty

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2009 14valentines challenge. Theme: [politics and voting](http://community.livejournal.com/14valentines/113283.html).

_One minute I held the key  
Next the walls were closed on me  
And I discovered that my castles stand  
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand._  
\---'Viva la Vida,' Coldplay

 

It hadn't taken much to figure out that when the spaceship that looked like the Titanic had missed Buckingham Palace, then the Doctor would be nearby. Harriet tried to figure on a place that he might stop, but she really hadn't the slightest, and so she hung about the parks of London, thinking that he might land his blue police box in one of them and their relatively secluded areas.

She was all the way on the other side of the square when she heard the rotor-like sound of the Doctor's ship, something she faintly remembered from the first time they met, or maybe not, or maybe in her dreams, or her nightmares, somewhere. But she ran, with her little flashlight and her mace that her old security detail had once given her with her panic button and then never really taken back (oh, it was probably illegal and she was a private citizen. She should give it back, she really should.), thinking of all the questions that she wanted to ask, nay demand answers of him.

She missed him, and besides, she wasn't sure that she even wanted any answers. If she had been a better Prime Minister, she would have never lost her post, perhaps. Or perhaps she had never had a chance, and who was the Doctor to make those kinds of decisions? Was the Doctor even human? Most likely not. Harriet's view of aliens based on her exposure to them was all too grim.

But yes, she had missed him, though not the man emerging from the park in the middle of the night. An older man, with a dazed look about him, muttering to himself in some language with which she was not familiar. She had almost run from him, and then she reconsidered; running from other humans just wasn't in her nature.

He had hummed to himself, looking furtively at something in his hand until almost coming to a stop under the street lamp next to her. "Dear me," he said, smiling at her through his spectacles. It took her a second to take in his bedraggled appearance. He looked rather like he'd been crawling through wreckage. "You wouldn't happen to know of a nearby hotel that might take—" he glanced at his hand and then showed it to her.

"Visa?" she asked, then thumbed behind her. "Three blocks down. A whole row of them."

The man clapped his hands. "First a few nights, and then a house!" He slipped the credit card into his pocket and grabbed Harriet's hand, pumping it up and down. "Thank you very much," he said, a little louder than normal, and she wondered if he wasn't a bit deaf. He let go of her hand, and she watched him almost skip down the street.

It occurred to her later that he probably wasn't human, either.

TWO DAYS LATER:

It wasn't difficult to locate the man again. He had stopped at the first hotel in the area, booked a room, and happily spent the days roaming bookstores and corner shops, or buying bags of street vendor food and devouring it whilst sitting on park benches, laughing madly at murders of crows and the Queen's swans fighting for bread scraps by the lake.

"You aren't allowed to feed the birds," she said cheerfully, sitting down next to him. His hand froze over the tape that held the bag closed.

"No?" he asked, shoving over so that she had more room on the bench, or rather more space between the two of them. "Whyever not?"

Harriet pulled a crust of bread from her pocket and tossed it on the ground, and her point was illustrated when a swarm of pigeons surged over it chaotically.

"Oh my," he said when one of the pigeons landed on his knee.

Harriet shooed it off. "Quite." In seconds, the bread was gone, and the birds eyed them expectantly. She didn't have anything to give them, and she hoped that they would figure that out eventually. Instead, they crept closer, towards the man and his rustling bag.

"I'm Mister Copper," he said jovially, making 'shooing' motions with his feet. Most of the birds ignored him and simply waited. It was unnerving. Shortly after her deposition, Harriet had watched an old Hitchcock film about birds. It had been rather silly, but watching the creatures at her feet, she could see from where the kernel of horror had arisen.

Harriet was sure now that Mister Copper was not of Earth origin, no matter how human he looked, when he turned to her and said, "And who might you be?"

"You really don't know who I am?" she asked dryly. It had become a joke, really. She couldn't help it; that was how she introduced herself. Nothing, she supposed, had been funnier to her staff than her picture on the front of the Daily Mirror, flashing her badge to the Prime Minister of Japan, the caption reading , "MINISTER ASO SAYS, 'YES, I KNOW WHO YOU ARE, MINISTER JONES.'"

Mister Copper tossed the peanut bag from one hand to the next. "I'm afraid not. Should I?" He raised his eyebrows. "My memory simply isn't what it used to be."

Harriet cocked her head and glanced sideways to see if he was taking the mickey. No. He _must_ have been an alien.

"Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister." She almost flashed her ID before she realised that she hadn't one. For a while she'd toyed with using her passport, but that seemed a bit much. Her fingers itched when she didn't have one, and she considered the fact that really, this was the first time in a long time that she had _had_ the opportunity to introduce herself. Everyone, apparently took great delight in remarking on how much they knew her.

Mister Copper clapped his hands. "Oh! Minister, eh? You perform weddings and preside at the ritual of the cannibal consumption of the god, right?"

Harriet's hand closed on the can of pepper spray in her pocket. "Come now, Mister Copper, are you _really_ from this planet?

Mister Copper blinked twice. "Oh dear, yes," he stammered. "I just have a mild case of...amnausea, or rather something like—" he stopped when she produced the mace, her hand resting lightly in her lap.

"It's all right if you are," she said brightly. "You wouldn't be the first person I've met who has been from another planet. Though granted I have yet to meet one who wasn't about to incinerate a large part of London..."

Mister Copper sighed. "Yes, well, I'm actually a salesman. Well I _was_ a salesman. Then I was a tour guide, and then, well now, I uhm." He raised his hands. "I'm enjoying retirement."

Harriet smiled and watched one of the swans sail out into the middle of the pond. "Ah yes, retirement. Blessed retirement."

Mister Copper unpeeled the plastic tape from the top of his bag of peanuts. "Quite nice, really. Are you retired?" He stopped, his face a bit horrified. "I didn't mean to say that you _look_ old enough to be retired. Oh dear." He shrugged and glanced away. "It's not very nice to comment on a woman's age, is it?"

Harriet laughed. "Of all of the things you might say, Mister Copper. No, it's not very nice." She waved a hand. "But I never quite cared about that anyway."

Mister Copper held out the opened bag to her. "Apologies?"

Harriet understood when it was time to be politic, and when it was time to forge alliances. She reached out and dug her hand in the bag, scraping a few peanuts and tossing them to the birds that were slowly encroaching into her private space. She wasn't the Prime Minister anymore; she could pretend to not know the rules. They were, after all, on this bench, on this planet, together, and the sun was shining. And if that wasn't a wonderful thing, sometimes, to think about, then she didn't know what was.

"I haven't told you my first name," Mister Copper said, holding out his hand. "Bayldon."

Harriet glanced at the hand before taking it in her own. "Bayldon."

 

THREE WEEKS LATER:

"I'm afraid that I don't really have a place to stay that's more permanent. It seems that one cannot simply purchase a house with a credit card," Bayldon told her over a shared plate of fried calamari. She'd picked the restaurant this time, as last time he'd chosen by name, and they'd has a very poor dinner at McDonald's. "They want you to sign papers and produce forms of identification that I must confess I do not have." He grimaced. "It was very kind of the Doctor to drop me here, and at the time I was quite grateful."

Harriet smiled, and for the first time in a long time, she knew that the smile was genuine. For the first year, she'd had trouble smiling when she thought of the Doctor. "Oh, I don't know. The alternative you told me about was rather harsh."

Bayldon stared off into space. "I suppose it is a poor thing for me to bemoan my circumstances. I find though, that for all my education about your Earth, the many things that I do not know are almost overwhelming."

Harriet placed one hand on his. "It's your Earth now, too."

Bayldon glanced down at her hand before returning his gaze to her eyes. "Too true. Too true."

 

THREE MONTHS LATER:

"Did you know that this woman has eighteen children?" Bayldon said, staring at the telly incredulously. "Does she have some sort of special reproductive system?"

Harriet smiled at the telly over the pile of paperwork that she was working on. Bayldon had moved into the spare guest room, once she had been thoroughly convinced that he hadn't a zipper in his forehead, not indeed a malicious bone in his body. They managed in a sort of companionable way, making breakfast and going out to dinner and in between that sitting on the sofa and dreaming ways for Bayldon to use his newfound wealth in positive ways.

Harriet stared at the blueprints in front of her. The so called 'subwave' network was a sentient thing, from god knows where, and not in the possession of Torchwood. It was an intriguing piece of equipment, and the potential it had filled her head with flights of fancy. And of course, dreams of the dread that would have to come before it, for it to even be called for, actually.

"No," she said distractedly. "She just likes children."

Bayldon set a mug of tea next to her and switched off the telly with the remote. He loved remotes. She had bought an extra universal one that could activate almost every piece of electronic equipment in her house, just for him, and he often shuffled about with it in the pocket of his red cardigan. She passed the paper to him and watched him read the schematics with a flick of his sharp eyes.

"Oh my," he said softly, "This isn't from this planet, is it?"

Harriet sipped from her tea and leant in closer to gaze at it over his shoulder. He smelled like her soap. She had tried to get him more masculine scents, but he always seemed to gravitate back to her shower gel. That he didn't seem to care about the concept of masculine and feminine scents made her more than a little fond of him. She wondered what this meant about her.

"I don't think so," she replied. "It's fascinating, isn't it? We could use it to communicate with anything."

Bayldon turned his head so that he was looking almost directly into her eyes, his face inches from hers. "Still on about that Doctor thing, aren't you?"

Harriet shrugged. "He can't be here all the time," she said noncommittally. "I know for a fact that he isn't."

Bayldon smiled. "Well, these plans are fairly complete," he said, stacking the blueprints and clearing his throat. She retreated over to her airspace and shuffled a few stacks of papers. "Only..."

She glanced back at him, his hands folded on the papers, poised, waiting. "Only?"

"I wonder if I might kiss you, Harriet."

Harriet smiled. "You may."

 

SIX MONTHS LATER:

It was a fair exchange, really, that the Doctor gave her Bayldon, however inadvertently, even as he took her career. On the other hand, it wasn't a just exchange, and as far as meddling in the policies of Earth, she was still adamant that he had no right.

Somewhere in her heart, she'd never stopped being Prime Minister. Even when she'd put Bayldon in the ground last month (he'd never even had a cold for goodness's sake, who would have thought pneumonia?) and started spending obsessive amounts of time with the subwave network. Something in her gut told her that it needed work, that it needed to work soon. Her gut hadn't been wrong about the Slitheen, or the Sycorax, no matter what the Doctor thought about it, and her gut had taken her out into the middle of the night to watch the Titanic sail over the Palace, so she understood when it fluttered every time she glanced over at the computer consoles and wiring.

When the citizens of Earth looked out the windows at eight in the morning and saw the other planets in the sky, Harriet had just looked up and felt that flip in her stomach, and she wondered if this wasn't the end for all of them.

Well, she'd see about that.

The computers turned themselves on, just as they were supposed to. Harriet smiled when she saw the readouts scroll across the screen:

HARKNESS, JACK...ONLINE  
JONES, MARTHA...ONLINE  
NOBLE, DONNA...OFFLINE  
SMITH, SARAH JANE...ONLINE

Well, that was fine. Miss Noble was probably still with the Doctor, after all. She turned on the microphone and cleared her voice, taking the feed live. "Can anyone hear me? The Subwave network is open. You should be able to hear my voice."

The feeds resolved into static for a few seconds, and Harriet tweaked the transitional wave feed. "This message is of the utmost importance. We haven't much time. Can anyone hear me?"

Audio came over, faint and shaky. A female voice remarking on the message. Could it be that they couldn't get through? Bayldon had always meant to test it with her, but they had just never got around to it. There had been too much to see and do, after all. Too many things in the Earth needed to be seen and held, and for Bayldon, tasted, apparently.

Then a man's voice, "The whole world's crying out. Just leave it."

Harriet stiffened. "Captain Jack Harkness, shame on you!" She turned a few more of the amplifier tuners and almost smacked the side of the screen. She had never quite got over that urge to smack the side of the telly when the reception went out. "Now stand to attention, sir!"

The screen resolved to clarity and she could see the under ground walls of Torchwood Three. On the other screen, Sarah Jane Smith's puzzled face peered at her, and she knew they could see her.

"Who is that?" Captain Jack called before skidding to a halt in front of the camera.

Harriet took a deep breath, steeled herself, and then flipped her passport up so that they could see it. Just the motion of lifting it settled a mantle on her shoulders, one that she knew like a second skin.

"Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister."

END


End file.
